Question

I have a suite of Selenium tests that I created in the Selenium IDE and ported over to Java. In several tests I use the Java equivalent of the verifyTextPresent command to confirm some text on the page (verifyTrue(selenium.isTextPresent())).

I found an spelling error in the text on the page when running the test from the IDE, but the error was not caught when running the test via Selenium RC/TestNG. Here’s an example of the code that I have and the text that is causing the problem (spelling error in bold):

Text:

Please correct the errors indicated below.

You need to add a least one restriction.

IDE:

verifyTextPresent | Please correct the errors indicated below.
verifyTextPresent | You need to add at least one restriction.

Java:

verifyTrue(selenium.isTextPresent("Please correct the errors indicated below."));
verifyTrue(selenium.isTextPresent("You need to add at least one restriction."));

Since both versions of the test have the correct text, why is the Selenium RC version not catching the error? Has anyone else had this problem?

Answer 1

The reason why this happens is that the test continues to run after the call to verifyTrue(). Verifications in Selenium catch the exceptions that would be thrown by a failed verification, as opposed to an assertion which throws an exception and causes the test to fail. Because verifications catch exceptions instead of throwing them, the test passes.

At the end of the test, the method checkForVerificationErrors() needs to be called to see if any of the verifications failed. If the method is not called, any verification errors will be ignored and the test will still pass (absent any other problems).

A discussion on the Selenium Google Group about the error itself is here. A discussion about the various verifications vs. assertions is here.